1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to copying apparatus having an editing mode for identifying areas of original documents of a first production run for special treatment, and more specifically to interrupting the editing mode to complete a higher priority job and to thereafter reinstate the status of the apparatus to complete the remainder of the editing mode of the first production run which was interrupted.
2. Background Art
Copiers having image editing modes are well known. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,740,818, electrophotographic reproduction apparatus is described in which an original document to be copied is placed face up on an exposure platen, whereat a wand is used by an operator to identify locations on the original document which define an area for special treatment such as screening, erase, annotation, spot coloration (also called "accent coloring"), relocation in the page format, etc.
Often, it is necessary to interrupt a production run in mid-stream so that a job of higher priority can be processed. If such interruption occurs during the printing mode, there is generally no problem. However, interruption of the editing mode could well result in operator confusion when the interrupted edit mode is reinstated. Once a special treatment is selected, the area of the original document to which that treatment is to be applied is defined by identifying two or more corners thereof. Should a job be interrupted after the first corner is identified but before the last, the operator might forget how far he or she was into the edit.
Accordingly, the present invention specifies various stages during the editing process at which an interrupt may and may not occur.
Copiers are known that include a buffer memory for electronically storing scanned image data and printing instructions for a plurality of pages of a job. Once stored, the pages can be printed as often as desired to produce a plurality of collated sets. If such a copier had a priority interrupt mode operable during scanning, the higher priority job would be loaded into buffer along with the data for the interrupted production run. By the present invention, accommodation is made for the higher priority job data in the such copiers. Preferably, the higher priority job is limited to a single image frame such that duplex copies and multi-color copies which require more than one image frame to produce are excluded. If there is insufficient space in the buffer for storing the data for the higher priority job, the interrupt mode is disabled. Once the higher priority job is produced, its data is erased from buffer.